Employers and professional recruiters use a few approaches to attract employment candidates to fill available positions. Perhaps the most common approach is advertising in the employment section of a newspaper, on a website geared towards advertising employment opportunities, or in a magazine that is targeted to people having specific skills (e.g., engineers, attorneys, computer programmers, and so on). Other approaches include participating in job fairs and direct mail invitations arranged through industry trade organizations.
A conventional posting is a text-based advertisement that provides a brief description of the available position, along with an address, telephone number, facsimile number and/or e-mail address for applying. Occasionally, a posting will also include a brief statement about the company and one or more hyperlinks, such as a link to a company's web page. Typically, important details about the position and non-employment features of the opportunity are omitted. Thus, an applicant is often left to his or her own devices for gathering information about the company, its staff and the community, all of which are extremely relevant to suitability of the job. Applicants may apply for the advertised position by sending their resumes to the prospective employer or a recruiter by facsimile, regular mail or e-mail. An employer will usually have a person in its employment or human resources department screen the resumes to identify applicants qualified for the position.
An employer will usually have a person in its employment or human resources department screen the resumes to identify applicants that are best suited for the position. Candidates that pass initial screening may then be invited to telephonic and/or in-person interview. Often, the candidate-recruiter or candidate-employer relationship is impersonal and brief. Candidates are often ultimately forced to make substantial life-altering decisions based on a sketchy classified advertisement and one or two formal, brief and often hectic encounters with a prospective employer. Frequently, this approach results in interviewing ill-informed unqualified candidates, and an attendant waste of time and money.
Therefore, a continuing need exists for a system and method which will enhance the efficiency of recruiting efforts while providing prospective candidates with data needed to make an informed intelligent decision about a position, a company and its community. Early in the recruiting process, the system should efficiently present details about the position, employer, staff and community to reduce the risk of wasting time and resources on disinterested or unqualified candidates. The system should be easy to use. Additionally, the system should enable a candidate and employer to devote valuable interview time on important specific details, rather than background information and generalities. Furthermore the system should be suitable for use by an employer, recruiter, or a job-posting service provider (e.g., universities, professional organizations or career websites).